Pistis (Gal. 5: 22-25) 9/16/12

A quick look at the words faith, faithful, faithfulness indicates their use in either Hebrew or Greek some 337 times in the Bible, give or take a few. Paul uses one of these three words 127 times. That makes faith or some derivation of it one of the most worked nouns in the Scriptures. By that measurement alone, it would behoove us to know what the word means and how it is used. For starters, pistis is the Greek word for faithfulness and it is roughly synonymous with both belief and trust. If we looked up those words, I suspect we could add several hundred more references. Faithfulness: the act of being faithful. Let’s see, faithful is the adjective that modifies faith, so it must mean having faith. So there we are! All we have to do now is understand what faith means. Then we can get some and act on it and we will have faithfulness.

So what is faith? We’ve been down this road before. Remember? The writer of Hebrews tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (11:1). It almost sounds like doublespeak, but listen carefully, because it isn’t. The substance of things hoped for. Substance implies something tangible, something you can get your arms around, whether it is a thought or a thing. It’s real and substantial. That’s what this Scripture is getting at, that faith is a substance. It is something you can get your arms around. Faith is real and substantial. It isn’t a thing you can stick in your pocket, but it is a thought you can carry in your heart and mind and it’s just as real as the keys jingling in your pocket. So…now we know that faith is sort of like the meat on the bones of hope. But we still don’t exactly see how to put it to use. We need to do something with these things we hope for, don’t we?

Like all the other fruits we have studied, faith is of little good sitting on a shelf in our hearts. We have to get it down and take it for a walk out here in the world. How do we do faith? Well, that same writer of Hebrews gives us some examples from history. He chronicles a hall of faith. Abraham obeyed God’s call and “went out, not knowing where he was going” (v. 8). He did it on faith. He offered up his own son as a sacrifice to God, raised his knife to cut the throat of his beloved son and only withdrew upon the command of God’s angel. He did that on faith, too.  The list in Hebrews 11 covers an assortment of the faithful men and women who answered God’s call, starting with Abel and going all the way through the prophets of old. For their trouble, they were rewarded with mocking and flogging, chains and imprisonment, torture, stoning, destitution, affliction, homelessness and even death.

There is a good side to this hit parade of the faithful, Hebrews tells us also that these faithful “conquered kingdoms, enforced justice… stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight and last, but not least, were made strong out of weakness” (v. 33, 34).

Though their faith was certainly commendable and their lives made the better for their efforts, none of the witnesses—Hebrews calls them a “cloud of witnesses”-- mentioned in Hebrews received what was promised. They went to their graves believing…being faithful to the cause… without the proof of the pudding. They saw preliminary glimpses of what was to come, but like Moses gazing across the Jordan while he stayed back as his people crossed the river, they did not taste the promise fulfilled. That was for later. The New Covenant was going to be fulfilled and something better was coming. The cloud of witnesses had faith in the promise.

So even though it sounds like we’re going in a circle, having faithfulness really is being faithful. But being faithful is no easy chore. And what we are faithful to is going to make all the difference. We learn about being faithful to God through our earthly relationships. Are you faithful to your spouse? To your children? Are you faithful to those for whom you work? For those who work for you? Are you faithful and reliable in your dealings with others? In all these ways, we learn the meaning of being faithful. Put another way, you might say that being faithful is being trustworthy and reliable. Are you faithful in the little things as well as the big ones? In Luke’s gospel, Jesus cautions his disciples that dishonesty in the little things is the seed of bigger dishonesty. If you can’t be faithful in the wealth that comes from the things of the earth, don’t expect God to entrust you to the true riches of the kingdom. Jesus says we cannot serve two masters. We can’t serve both God and money (16:13). The Greek word here for money is mamona, which also translates as mammon or riches. The point goes beyond financial wealth. If you choose to serve God, you are also choosing to let nothing else take priority over that commitment. This does not mean that you neglect your family or your work. It means just the opposite. It means that in all your dealing, you bring your Christian beliefs to the table.

Think about your life. How do your children think of you? How does your boss think of you? How does your spouse think of you? How does your church think of you? Are you trustworthy? Are you reliable? This is the way you live out your faithfulness. This is what God wants from us. This is part and parcel of the fruit of the Spirit. Our Lord gives it first to us. We only return to him that faithfulness which has first been extended to us. God is our model. The Psalmist reminds us that the “the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness” (Ps. 34).

Since this a Sunday we set aside to celebrate the presence and contributions of the older adults among us, I want to mention just a few older adults in the Scriptures. Moses comes to mind, He stood poised to take over the reigns of Egypt at the age of 40, but God had other plans for him. That’s not so unusual but the story gets better. At the age of 80, God called Moses back into service to lead the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt. Moses continued to lead God’s people for another forty years to the ripe old age of 120 before he handed over the reins to Joshua, his general who was probably mature enough to handle it since he was 80 years old. Bear in mind that the story of God’s chosen people begins with Abraham and Sarah. Abraham has no children until he is about 100 years old. He has Isaac through Sarah when she is 90. The pregnancy of Sarah is so unlikely that Sarah laughs at the angel of God when she hears that she will conceive a child. In commemoration of this, their son is named Isaac, which means “laughter.” The apostle Paul didn’t even take his first missionary journey until well into his forties. The Bible is full of examples of persons whose greatest contributions came in their senior years.  

Thomas Obadiah Chisholm was born in a log cabin in Franklin, Kentucky in 1866, only a year after the end of the Civil War. By the time he was sixteen years old, he was teaching school. Eleven years later, he was converted to Christianity at a revival. He served one year as a Methodist minister, but had to resign for health reasons. He took up selling insurance, but he had a yen for poetry. Over the course of his life, he wrote over twelve hundred sacred poems. He sent one of those poems to a friend at the Moody Bible Institute. His friend William Runyan wrote the music to go with the poem and it was published. We know it as Great is Thy Faithfulness. Chisholm’s most famous poem was written in his fifties when he was apparently long removed from ministry. We sing it today as do many churches around the world. The chorus is a famous litany of faith:

                   Great is thy faithfulness,

great is thy faithfulness,

                   Morning by morning

new mercies I see;

                   All I have needed

Thy hand hath provided—

                   Great is thy faithfulness,

Lord, unto me.

As we go about our daily tasks, though they may be boring, though they may have been done ten thousand times before, though we may feel that they could not possibly have anything to do with the kingdom of God, let us give pause. It is not only what we do, but also the way we do it, that witnesses to the Lord and to his people. Are you being faithful?

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness…